


Firebug

by conceptstage



Series: Team Human Week [4]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: crteamhumanweek2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:28:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21744508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptstage/pseuds/conceptstage
Summary: Team Human Week Day Three, Prompt: BetrayalBeau insists she's fine but Caleb can't help feeling like he betrayed her.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast
Series: Team Human Week [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1565884
Comments: 3
Kudos: 199
Collections: Team Human Week 2019





	Firebug

Caleb considers himself a cautious man. His friends may bring up the time he told three strangers in a tavern that Nott was goblin within minutes of meeting them or the time he tossed himself into the gaping maw of a half dead star god and disagree, but Caleb stood by his assessment of his own risk taking. The risks that he takes are always worth it and the ones he doesn’t were worth being cautious about. Always.

Telling Beau and Nott about his past? A risk worth taking.

Giving up the Beacon to keep them out of jail? It worked out for the best in the end.

Tossing himself into the gaping maw of a half dead star god? Well… He doesn’t count that one.

And the one thing that he puts above all else is his own safety and the safety of his family.

He was half awake that night, staring at the words in the book open in his lap as they blurred and shifted in front of his eyes. He was just about to mark his page and close the book, close his eyes for the night and wake up well rested and full of magic in the morning. 

They had stopped for the night at a small town near the border and separated into their usual pairings. Caleb and Nott were sharing a room with Fjord and Caduceus across the hall and Jester was in the room right above Caleb’s, with Yasha. Beau had met a ‘friend’ in the tavern that evening and told them all not to wait up as she sauntered behind her new companion out the front door.

Caleb was startled to alertness by a noise at the window and glanced up.

In the dim light from the moons in the sky, he saw the top of someone’s head and two hands as they pulled themselves up to the window sill. He called a flame to his fingers and sat his book slowly to the side as the person outside his window struggled to get their fingers up under the window and jimmy it open. It stuck and he heard them curse under their breath, pausing to shift their grip on the window sill and try again. Caleb felt the sharp bite in the air as the winter breeze wafted through the room. Nott was snoring quietly in the bed by the far wall and Caleb briefly wondered if he could wake her up without alerting his intruder. The person at the window tried to open it again and, this time, the window slid up enough for them to fit through and they huffed quietly as they swung their top half up and over the window sill.

Calebs let the Widogast’s Web of Flame fly from his fingertips, saying the words of the spell without caring for subtlety and smacking his hand against the wood of his nightstand. Lines of red fire flew from his fingers until they came together into a single bolt.

The person looked up and, in the seconds between his casting and the impact, the light from the fire illuminated their face and Caleb saw Beau’s wide, frightened blue eyes staring back at him. She made a last minute move to avoid it but there was not much room for her to maneuver when she was only half through the window and it hit her in the chest, sending her flying out into the night. Caleb was on his feet before he even heard the crash of her landing hard on the ground. He ran to the window and threw his head out, looking for her in the snow. 

“Beau!”

Nott blinked blearily at him when he turned to look at her and frowned. “Caleb? What’s going on?”

“Wake up Caduceus!” he hissed, running towards the door. “Tell him to meet me outside! Hurry!” He stumbled down the stairs as fast as his feet would carry him and threw himself out into the night, shivering in his thin shirt and cloth pants but running barefoot across the snow towards where he’d last seen Beau.He found her easily, up on her hands and knees and breathing heavily into the snow. “Beau,” he hissed, landing on his knees beside her. “Beau, look at me!” He grabbed her shoulder when she didn’t turn but she knocked his hand with her elbow. Her jade tattoo glittered in the moonlight on the back of her neck.

“I’m fine,” she hissed, her voice coarse. “I’m fine!” She picked up a handful of snow and pressed it against her clavicle, hissing when the cold hit her heated skin. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Caleb gave up on getting her to show him the wound he’d caused her and put his hand on her back, patting her gently between the shoulder blades in his best imitation of a comforting gesture. “Caduceus is on his way, he will fix this.” He let out a shaking breath and closed his eyes. “Beau, I am so sorry, I did not- I do not…”

“I’m fine,” she said again, slightly muffled with her face pressed against the ground. “I get hit worse than this everyday by people I like a hell of a lot less than you, I’m fine. How- How long did you say Cad would be?” Her voice sounded a little panicked at the end.

“He should be on his way right now,” he looked back at where he’d come from and saw Nott running towards him. He didn’t see Cad or anyone else but they probably weren’t far behind. Nott ran around them so that she was kneeling beside Beau’s head.

“What happened?” She asked. 

“I- I,” Caleb stuttered. “I thought she was an intruder!”

Beau coughed into the snow. “I thought it was Jester’s room,” she answered. “Last time I try to play a prank on the follower of a Trickster God, I can tell you that.”

Nott tugged gently on Beau’s shoulder. “Sit up, sit up, let me see.”

Beau hesitated still. “I’m fine, I’ll just wait for-”

“Sit up,” Nott said again, a bit more forcefully, in the ‘Mom’ voice that she only broke out when one of the Nein was being particularly obstinate.

Beau let out a breath that she’d been holding. “Make Caleb turn around,” she said. “Caleb, you can’t look, alright? Fucking swear to me that you won’t look.”

“Why?”

“Swear, goddamnit.”

“I swear,” he said, with no intention of keeping it. Nott waved at him until he turned away and then he heard them shifting around behind him. As he was turned away, he saw Caduceus and Fjord come around the corner and start heading swiftly towards them. “Ah,” he said, turning around. “Caduceus is here-” He cut himself off.

Beau was sitting up with her knees folded underneath her. Nott had removed her coat so she was just in her usual crop top. It was burned away around her clavicle and he could see her skin pinching and curling and blistering from the heat of his fire across her chest from shoulder to shoulder and up on her neck as if she was being choked by a wrinkled hand. He felt nauseous at the sight and froze, his brain shutting off like it did when he killed someone with fire, but worse almost. 

Beau shook his shoulder and glared at him and he heard her voice like she was speaking through water. “Hey, motherfucker, you swore. Wake up, I’m fine. Look at me, I’m fine.”

Caleb blinked as her voice started to come into focus. “I… I am so sorry, I cannot… I am so sorry.”

“I’m made of tougher stuff than your fucking spell, man. I’m fine. This is a sunburn at most, it just looks worse than it is, I promise. I’m fine.” She looked up when Fjord and Caduceus reached her and kneeled beside her. “I’m fine,” she said before they could speak. “I startled our resident firebug. Just heal me up so that he’ll stop fucking apologizing.”

Caduceus frowned and ran the tips of his fingers over Beau’s burn and she winced. “It’s deep,” he said. “Second degree. You’ll have a scar.” She had scars on her arms too from when she’d pulled Nott out of the lava, scars that matched the ones on Nott’s legs. No big deal, she was covered in scars, she could handle a few more.

“Just do what you can.”

Caduceus' hands started to glow green and the burns on her clavicle and neck started to fade away. The edges of the burn healed completely but closer to the center where the burn was more concentrated formed scar tissue. It was faded like it had happened years ago, if you didn’t know it was there, you might not even see it at all.

She sighed in relief as the pain faded away. “Woo,” she huffed, smirking. “Much better. Thanks, Deuce.” She turned back to Caleb and put her hand on his shoulder. “You alright? See, I’m fine. I told you I was fine. Let’s all go to sleep now, no harm done.” She must have seen the disbelief on his face because she sighed and rolled her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that, man. This wasn’t your fault, okay? This is on me, I miscounted the windows. This isn’t on you.”

“How can you say that? I burned you. If I had waited to see… If- If I had given you a chance to-”

“And if I had actually been an intruder you might be dead. You made the right move, you protected yourself. I will never be angry at you for protecting yourself, I promise.” Fjord reached for her arm and helped pull her up to her feet. She grunted and leaned on him for a second to catch her own weight and then started brushing snow off her clothes. “Let’s go inside, at least. It’s cold as balls out here.”

Nott walked over to Caleb and started brushing snow off of him as he stood up. “You’re shivering,” she said. “You need to warm up, let’s go inside.”

He looked down at his hands and saw his fingers shaking but he knew that it wasn’t from the cold. He let Nott lead him inside anyway. Everyone separated back to their respective beds and Nott fell asleep instantly even though Caleb stayed awake, staring at his ceiling. 


End file.
